Posts Tagged ‘environment’

Macrobiotic cooking basics

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Principles of macrobiotic cooking

For more than three milliard years, no other species developed the art of cooking. For millions of years have our ancestors eat wild cereal grains, thereby they contributed to the expansion of their intellect, erected posture and high level of consciousness. During the ice age, humanity began to use fire for adjusting to cold climate. Fire give energy, vitalize physical, mental and spiritual activity. Fire used for cooking had created human culture and civilization.

At the beginning fire was used just for cooking. Then was used for the manufacturing of wear, building of dwellings and creation of tools and equipments in the nature environment. Intellectual, emotional, social and ideological awareness of species homo sapiens was developed very rapidly thanks to fire in the outer settings (culture) and in the inner settings (food cooking). By the people uniquely used fire was object of many traditional myths and legends. For example narrative of Prometheus is response to the meaning of using fire at the destiny of mankind.

However, as the use of fire began widen to the next regions of life and arised new technologies, people began lose the ability to flexibly adapt and secure to maintain natural environment for cooking of food. In place of that, the human civilization still more succumb to artificial thermic environment, that is defy of their control.

Modern population suffer now from various physical and mental diseases, caused mainly by the long-term consumption of unnatural and artificial foods and drinks and also by breathing the polluted air and drinking contaminated water, that all is caused by unproper using of heat energy. Present world is afflicted by different social conflicts and fights, wars and battles, that are also consequencies of abusing of fire energy. Our race is now from this reason placed before the possibility of extinction. To reverse of this trend is needed, that everybody understand the basics of cooking and apply them daily. Proper cooking will not only protect the possibility of maintaining life on this planet. It will have also impact on the next evolution of human consciousness. Cooking is the highest art, that mankind have created. We have many masterly works from Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Mozart, Beethoven. But only cooking is able to create and change daily life of us all.

Purpose of cooking is to harmonize with surroundings – minerals, water, biological life, atmosphere, pressure and time.

Preparation of simple macrobiotic meals is the most practical and slightly densed method for smooth transformation of man to healthy, happy and freedom being.

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Chemicals in food

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

CHEMICALS
Chemicals in food, the home, the workplace, and the environment have become a hallmark of modern civilization and are a major cause of the modern health and environmental crises. According to U.S. government estimates, 87,000 chemicals are used as industrial wastes, solvents, cleansers, pesticides, food additives, plastics, cosmetics, nutritional supplements, and petroleum byproducts. An estimated 15 percent of Americans suffer from chemical sensitivity, though their sensitivity is often labeled as psychosomatic. See Attention-Deficit Disorder, Environment, Fluoridation, Infectious Diseases, Pesticides, Sewage Sludge, Water.

• Reproductive and Genetic Effects of Chemicals - Chemicals used in industry and agriculture may be responsible for the epidemic of reproductive problems since 1940. Tens of thousands of chemicals have been introduced in the last half century, many of which remain in the environment for generations. Even small amounts can lead to the accumulation of considerable quantities of toxins in human and animal tissues. This can seriously imperil health, reproduction, and fetal development.
Source: “Male Reproductive Health and Environmental Oestrogens,” Lancet 345(8955):933-35, 1995.

• European Report Faults Hormone Disrupters - The European Environmental Agency has confirmed evidence that many synthetic chemicals in the environment “may be threatening normal hormone function in both humans and and wildlife.” The synthetic chemicals can masquerade as hormones and disrupt the delicate cycles in living organisms. For example, snails, mussels, and other molluscs have turned from female to male as a result of exposure to hormone disruptors. Fish, including the Great Lake salmon, have developed both male and female sex organs. Testicular, breast, and prostate cancers in humans have risen dramatically in recent years and may be associated with exposure to chemicals, including laundry detergents, cosmetics, plastics, and soaps. The report upheld Principle 15 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, known as the precautionary principle, which states that “where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”
Source: Jennifer Kalnins, “European Report Recognizes Hormone Disruptions,” Alternatives Journal 24(1):4, 1998.

• EPA to Test Thousands of Chemicals for Cancerous and Mutagenic Effects - In 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a massive project to screen thousands of common chemicals, including pesticides, plastics, and cosmetics, for possible carcinogenic and mutagenic effects. The initial test will examine 15,000 chemicals for estrogen and other endocrine-like effects. Known as endocrine disrupters, certain substances in chemicals can mimic or interfere with hormones, causing problems with development, behavior, and reproduction. These have been associated with causing birth defects, low sperm counts, breast cancer, mental impairment, and other disorders. After initial screening, suspects chemicals would be subjected to comprehensive testing on laboratory mammals, birds, amphibians, fish and shrimp.
Source: John H. Cushman, Jr., “EPA to Hunt Dangers in Everyday Products,” New York Times, August 28, 1998.

• Toxic Deception - In a study of the chemical industry, two researchers document how the chemical industry manipulates science, bends the law, and endangers public health. The book also summarizes many studies detailing the abuse of pesticides, toxins, and carcinogens in the food supply, environment, and workplace.
Source: Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle, Toxic Deception (Birch Lane Press, 1997.

• Our Stolen Future - Three researchers examine the worldwide threat of PCBs, DDT, and other toxins to the ecosystem, the food supply, and human beings and the threat they pose to fertility, intelligence, and survival.
Source: Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers, Our Stolen Future (New York: Dutton, 1996).

• Toxic Chemicals in the Deep Ocean - Toxic industrial chemicals have shown up in the tissues of whales that normally feed in the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean, raising concern about the safety of the ocean’s food chain. Dutch researchers reported that the chemicals, polybrominated compounds that are used as flame retardants in children’s clothing, TV casings, and other products, behave like PCBs and DDT. The chemicals enter the atmosphere and river and sea water as a result of incomplete municipal incineration and eventually find their way into animal and human tissue. The findings are particularly troubling because the whales normally feed at a depth of between 1000 and 3600 feet and hunt in northern waters that are believed to be clean.
Source: Marlise Simons, “Whale Tissue Raises Worry on Toxic Chemicals,” New York Times, August 30, 1998.

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Animal waste

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

ANIMAL WASTE
Animal manure poses a national environmental risk. Amounting to 1.3 billion tons a year in the U.S., it exceeds the amount of human waste by 130 times, and there are no national standards for treating it. See Water.

• Animal Waste Major Water Polluter - According to a report by the U.S. Senate Agricultural Committee, animal waste is the major water polluter in the U.S. For example, a single 50,000-acre hog farm in Utah creates more waste than the city of Los Angeles and has no sewage plant to treat it. Premium Standard Farms, the nation’s second largest hog producer, produces five times more waste than the city of St. Louis. The study found that 60 percent of the nation’s rivers and streams were “impaired” by agricultural runoff. In 1996, for example, 40 animal waste spills killed 670,000 fish in Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri, double the number of spills four years previously. Excess nutrients form agricultural runoff have flowed down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico where they have created a dead zone, in which no living organisms can survive, the size of New Jersey.
Source: “Large Amounts of Animal Manure Pose Environmental Risks,” Associated Press, December 28, 1997; Stan Grossfeld, “Animal Waste Emerging as U.S. Problem,” Boston Globe, September 21, 1998.

• Animal Waste and Pollution of Chesapeake Bay - The outbreak of pfisteria piscida, a microorganism that has decimated fish populations in Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest and richest coastal estuary, has been linked with animal wastes along Maryland’s rural Eastern Shore, site of one of the country’s largest concentration of poultry farms. Physicians further confirmed that people who eat contaminated fish were at risk of coming down with a mysterious illness first observed by local fisherman that is characterized by chronic difficulties with learning and memory, as well as skin rashes and respiratory problems. Even young, vigorous men were unable to remember simple, basic things.
Excess nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous from the poultry farms have polluted rivers in the region and are believed to have turned the organisms, first identified in 1992, from a benign spore lying on the bottom of streambeds, into a powerful toxin. The Eastern Shore, encompassing part of Maryland, Delaware and Virginia, has 625 million chickens, and the poultry industry is growing at a rate of 20 percent yearly. “When you’ve got such a huge concentration [of animals] with literally millions of tons of waste, the land is not going to be able to absorb it,” Chad Smith a local environmentalist noted.
Source: David Lauter, “Livestock Wastes Pose Health Threat,” Los Angeles Times, September 21, 1997.

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